History Main / MysticalCityPlanning

* In the ''Literature/RiversOfLondon'' novel ''Broken Homes'', Skygarden Tower is a tower block designed by the architect Erik Stromberg, who the Faceless Man suspects was a practitioner, and created the building to be a magical piston, storing energy from everyone who lived there, to be released by the building's destruction. [[spoiler: Peter realises he was only half right; the glass "stadtkrone" at the top of the tower was intended to transmit the magic across the city, no destruction necessary. Smashing the stadtkrone prevents the Faceless Man from gaining the power, but ''not'' the building from being destroyed]].

* In ''VideoGame/VagrantStory'', the city of Leá Monde itself is actually the Gran Grimoire, the ultimate codex of magic. Incantations carved into the very stonework of the city made it into the source of The Dark. As a result, anyone who spends any length of time in the city will develop magical abilities...and lose their souls to the city in the process. Whoever has the literal key to the city, the Blood-Sin tattoo, holds power over its magic.

->In fact, very few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape of the M25 forms the sigil ''odegra'' in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds."

* The manga ''Manga/{{X1999}}'' boasts CLAMP Academy, a school whose buildings and campus were designed and arranged to [[spoiler:form a spell capable of sealing the Sacred Sword]]. There's also... y'know... the massive pentagram created by it's monorail system.
* In ''Anime/ACertainMagicalIndexMiracleOfEndymion'' it's revealed that the [[spoiler:Endymion space elevator]] was actually built in order to be the center for a magical circle large enough to encompass the entire earth. The scale of the structure on its own was enough to give it magical significance, but everything about it was built to channel a specific spell. The core room's true purpose was to house the center of the spell, and allowed the villain, who otherwise couldn't wield magic, to direct the spell.
* In ''LightNovel/{{Slayers}}'', Saillune's capital city is built with a series of defensive walls in the shape of a hexagram ({{Bowdlerise}}d to a pentagram in the ''Slayers Revolution'' anime), which boosts the power of WhiteMagic while weakening spells of other types.

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->''"[V]ery few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape of the M25 forms the sigil *odegra* in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means 'Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds'."''

* In ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'', ancient cities like Kholinar are built with complex radial symmetry that matches specific [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics cymatic patterns]]. Since symmetry is sacred to the Vorin church, some in-universe scholars take this as proof that those cities were built with divine guidance.

* In ''Webvideo/Dimension20'''s second Season, The Unsleeping City, the highways of the city of New york are [[spoiler:a glyph designed to dampen magic, created by Robert Moses]]

It is a specific form of {{Bizarrchitecture}} designed to invoke mystical power, usually GeometricMagic that's HiddenInPlainSight, such as a [[BanishingRitual sealing spell]] for SealedEvilInACan that's buried underground or a protection spell for the location. The more dangerous forms are a kind of MalevolentArchitecture that wreak eldritch havoc when activated. Worth mentioning that this can overlap with ConnectTheDeaths, if there is a mystical meaning behind several murder locations that somehow incorporates existing elements of a city's design. The key to this trope is that the shape itself is a spell on a monumental level.

* One of the major season-ending twists of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' involves a [[TheReveal Reveal]] that a large system of train tracks in the US Midwest actually forms a huge demonic seal intended to keep a gate to Hell closed. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero The Winchester brothers break the circle.]]

* ''Film/IronMan2'' has a sci-fi equivalent. Howard Stark discovered a new element back in the 70s but was unable to actually synthesize it, so he designed the grounds of the 1974 Stark Expo as a blueprint of the element in hopes that his son Tony would eventually find and decipher it to create what he couldn't.

* In ''Film/{{Ghostbusters|1984}}'', Ivo Shandor designed a building in New York for the sole purpose of channeling mystical energy, to open the gateway for Gozer to enter Earth. He then disguised this building as an apartment complex.
* ''Film/SherlockHolmes'' points this out during Sherlock's explanation of figuring out Blackwood's ConnectTheDeaths scheme: he says that cities have encoded references to the Masonic beliefs added to their design, which Blackwood has used to amplify his pretense of having come back from the dead. And using this, he discovers that the last target of Blackwood's [[ScoobyDooHoax "dark magic"]] rampage will be The Parliament.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU Magnasanti]], a town built by Vincent Oscala using ''VideoGame/SimCity 3000'', and is shaped after the Bhavacakra--the wheel of life and death in Buddhism. Unsurprisingly, it is a totalitarian hellscape with over six million citizens, where nobody lives to retirement age the people spend their entire lives in a tiny block of space, with no access to education, healthcare and fire response.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU Magnasanti]], a town built by Vincent Oscala using ''VideoGame/SimCity3000'', and is shaped after the Bhavacakra--the wheel of life and death in Buddhism. Unsurprisingly, it is a totalitarian hellscape with over six million citizens, where nobody lives to retirement age the people spend their entire lives in a tiny block of space, with no access to education, healthcare and fire response.

[[caption-width-right:350:Dis: Birthplace of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Down_(sandwich) Double Down]].]]

* In the ''Anime/ACertainMagicalIndexMiracleOfEndymion'' it's revealed that the [[spoiler:Endymion space elevator]] was actually built in order to be the center for a magical circle large enough to encompass the entire earth. The scale of the structure on its own was enough to give it magical significance, but everything about it was built to channel a specific spell. The core room's true purpose was to house the center of the spell, and allowed the villain, who otherwise couldn't wield magic, to direct the spell.

* In the ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'' movie, ''Miracle of Endymion'' it's revealed that the [[spoiler:Endymion space elevator]] was actually built in order to be the center for a magical circle large enough to encompass the entire earth. The scale of the structure on its own was enough to give it magical significance, but everything about it was built to channel a specific spell. The core room's true purpose was to house the center of the spell, and allowed the villain, who otherwise couldn't wield magic, to direct the spell.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''Literature/GoodOmens'', where the M25 motorway forms a demonic sigil that translates to "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds." Crowley considers it one of his finest demonic works as it generates all sorts of unpleasantness from its drivers.

* In ''Anime/MagicalShoppingArcadeAbenobashi'', figurines on four historic buildings prevent gates to alternate dimensions from opening, and the destruction of the last of them leaves the neighbourhood unprotected.

* One of the major season-ending twists of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' involves a [[TheReveal Reveal]] that a large system of train tracks in the US Midwest actually forms a huge demonic seal intended to keep a gate to Hell closed. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero The Winchesters brothers break the circle.]]

* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSpiritTracks'', the entire rail network is laid over a giant confining seal for a demon.

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* In ''Film/Ghostbusters1984'', Ivo Shandor designed a building in New York for the sole purpose of channeling mystical energy, to open the gateway for Gozer to enter Earth. He then disguised this building as an apartment complex.

* The People's Palace from the ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'' series is the seat of power of an ancient ruling wizard dynasty. It is built in the shape of a giant spell meant to empower any wizard from that dynasty and drain the power of anyone who is not, and powered up by the [[BloodMagic blood]] of all the people walking through its corridors. However, it's not quite unnoticed - one visitor managed to navigate it easily simply by knowing the spell.

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* ''Manga/{{Zenki}}'': The entire town turns out to be in the pattern of a pentagram designed to keep the BigBad from breaking free.